Alan S. Blinder, “Four Deficit Myths and a Frightening Fact,” Wall St. Journal, Jan. 19, 2012. Author opines that deficit-reduction is a low priority for the American public, that cutting spending immediately is not necessary, that there is no general problem of “runaway spending,” and that the real long-term deficit problem is health-care expenses.

Bill Whittle, “The Vote Pump,” The Firewall (video), Jan 25, 2012, Whittle presents succinct pie chart breaking down federal revenues, borrowing, and spending, to show that most federal spending consists of entitlements that by law cannot be reduced.

Bruce Bartlett, “Cooking the Books: the 2010 Deficit Was $2.1 Billion,”
www.thefiscaltimes.com, Dec. 24, 2010. Author reports that if the U.S.
government used accrual accounting, which gives a more accurate
financial picture and is mandatory for large corporations, the 2010
deficit would have been $2.1 trillion instead of the reported $1.3
trillion.

John Merline, “Opinion: What Does Government Do?,”
www.aolnews.com, Feb. 19, 2011. Author points out that federal budget
category of “direct payments to individuals,” which accounted for 2.4%
of federal spending in 1945, now accounts for more than two-thirds of
federal spending.

James C. Cooper, “Budget Deficit: Government Handouts Top Tax Income,”
The Fiscal Times, April 18, 2010. Author reports that for the first
time since the Great Depression, American households are receiving more
income from government than they are paying in taxes.

John Hinderaker, “The Purpose of Government,” www.powerlineblog.com, April 28, 2011. Author explains that federal government’s principal function is to transfer wealth from the young and middle-aged to the elderly because such transfers account for $1.159 trillion annually.

John Steele Gordon, “A Short Primer on the National Debt,” The Wall Street Journal, wsj.com, Aug. 29, 2011. Author lays out basic facts of U.S. public debt and argues that there are no insuperable problems to getting that debt under control.

Laurie Newsom, “Standard & Poors Downgrade Simplified,” gainesvilleteaparty.org, Sept. 4, 2011. Author removes a numver of zeroes from federal revenue, spending, and debt figures and presents them as if the government were a household to show how broke the U.S. is.

John Hinderaker, “U.S. Deleveraging, Unlike Some,” Powerline blog, Jan. 22, 2012. Author points out that total individual, business, and government debt in the U.S. has declined 16% since 2008 despite skyrocketing increases in government debt because individuals in the U.S., unlike those in other developed countries are deleveraging, and concludes that the U.S. could return to economic growth quickly if it could get federal spending under control. Another article that we could not reproduce pointed out that two-thirds of individual deleveraging is attributable to defaults on mortgages and credit cards.

e21 editorial staff, “The Next Entitlement Program: Interest on Debt,”
www.economics21.org, March 3, 2011. Authors project U.S. government’s
interest burden over time and conclude that President Obama’s 2010
budget “suggests a willingness to take risks with debt accumulation that
the nation simply cannot afford”

John Berlau and Trey Kovacs, “Romney and the Burden of Double Taxation,” Wall St. Journal, Jan. 24, 2012. Authors point out that Romney’s tax rate is much higher than the 15% rate on capital gains and qualified dividends because the corporations in which Romney owns shares already have paid up to 35% in corporate income tax.

Stephen Moore & Richard Vedder, “Higher Taxes Won’t Reduce the Deficit,”
Wall St. J., Nov. 21, 2010. Authors argue, based on U.S. fiscal
history since 1947, that raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit is
“a fool’s errand” because politicians will spend any additional revenue
and more.

W. Kurt Hauser, “There’s No Escaping Hauser’s Law,”
Wall St. J., Nov. 26, 2010. Author points out that tax revenues as a
share of U.S. gross domestic product have averaged just under 19%
regardless of tax rates, and concludes that it would be better to cut
tax rates and get 19% of a larger pie.

Nicoletta Batini, Giovanni Calegari, and Julia Guerreiro, “An Analysis
of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” Int’l Monetary Fund Working Paper, April
2011. Authors examine U.S. public debt and demographics and conclude in
a static analysis that full elimination of the fiscal and generational
imbalances would require large increases in all taxes coupled with an
immediate 35% cut in transfer payments to individuals.Int’l Monetary Fund Working Paper, April 2011. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp1172.pdf

Mark J. Perry, “Tax Rates and Shares of Revenue from Top 1%,”
Carpe Diem, April 21, 2011. Professor Perry compares the relationship
over time between the top marginal income tax rate and the share of
total income taxes paid by the top 1%, and concludes that a tax cut
likely would increase tax revenues from the wealthy for an overall
increase in tax revenue.

Steven Landsburg, “Getting It Right at Steven Landsburg,” thebigquestions.com, September 14, 2010 & September 15, 2010. Author in original post and in a followup post, explains why even a 1% capital-gains tax is higher than an income tax.

WebCPA editorial, “Over Half of Households Paid No Income Taxes,” www.accountingtoday.com, June 3, 2011. Editorial reports that Congressional Joint Commission on Taxation found that 51% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax in 2009.

U.S. Sec. & Exchange Comm., “SEC Charges State of New Jersey for Fraudulent Municipal Bond Offerings,”
press release, Aug. 18, 2010. Government files formal charge that
between August 2001 and April 2007, New Jersey engaged in securities
fraud in the sale of $26 billion of municipal bonds by creating an
impression that two of its public-pension funds were being adequately
funded.

William Voegeli, “The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm,”
City Journal, Autumn 2009. Author compares the tax and public-services
environments of California and Texas, and concludes that Texans pay
less taxes than Californians but receive better public services.

Greg Hinz, “Cook Taxpayers owe $108 billion, count Treasurer Pappas says,” ChicagoBusiness.com, June 21, 2011. Cook County Treasurer says that county’s debt now totals $108 billion, including $25 billion in unfunded public-employee pensions. (followup report indicates that the $108 billion figure is too low because 55 units of county government did not report their pension liabilities and the figure does not include unfunded health-care obligations to retired public employees)